Published on Nov 17, 2004
Berlin had to be a heady place to be recording a new album in
1990-91. The Wall had just fallen. East and West Germans were
mixing and partying and rediscovering one another’s cultures for
the first time in a generation. And U2 needed a hit.
They needed a hit because the arc of fame and
admiration/adulation that had risen through
War and
The Unforgettable Fire and
The Joshua Tree had leveled, perhaps even slid a bit, in the
wake of the somewhat bloated and self-indulgent
Rattle And Hum album and movie. The whispers were out that
maybe the band that had been plastered across the cover of
Time magazine as global icons was growing out of touch,
maybe even threatening to become irrelevant.
If that malady was the disease,
Achtung Baby was the cure.
This disc is the sound of U2 catching fire yet again, of a band
that had already reinvented itself from angry post-punks to
earnest, majestic rock and rollers going through yet another
metamorphosis. Exit bombastic dabblers in American r&b and
gospel, enter Euro-hip purveyors of brash experimental rock.
The one thing that’s absolutely consistent here with the music
that came before it is that this band simply oozes charisma. From
the purposefully startling harsh industrial opening of kickoff
track “Zoo Station” to the frequently distorted riffs to the
complex rhythm patterns and dense layers of percussion to the
refocusing of the lyrics on relationships rather than larger
concepts, the band finds a host of new ways on this disc to simply
demand listeners’ attention.
And let’s face it, it’s pretty tough to accuse a band of
irrelevance when they throw off the kind of sparks emitted by
powerhouse tracks like “Even Better Than The Real Thing,” “Until
The End Of The World” and “Mysterious Ways.” “Real Thing” is a
sharply arranged track featuring stinging, almost otherworldly
guitar licks slicing through the middle of Bono’s lushly layered
vocals. “Until The End…” starts out with a dose of tribal
thump from Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton before the Edge brings
it hard, slamming down an appropriately apocalyptic riff that
bludgeons you silly. This is super-sized rock and roll — and the
lyrics aren’t half bad either, a batch of surrealistic poetry with
memorable lines like “In my dream I was drowning my sorrows / but
my sorrows they learned to swim.”
Ah, but they’re just the appetizer for “Mysterious Ways,” one of
the band’s greatest creations, turbo-charged by a simply monstrous,
throbbing Jimi Hendrix-meets-George Clinton riff laid down over a
brilliantly propulsive bass line, dense percussion and Bono’s
ecstatic vocals. The bridge/breakdown/solo section is a thrill ride
all by itself. “Kiss the sky,” indeed — Jimi would smile at this
one, I think.
Other memorable tracks like “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses”
and “Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around The World” seduce with
melody. “Ultra Violet (Light My Way)” sounds a bit more like
Unforgettable Fire material except that it’s once again
relationship-focused.
And then there’s “One,” a track that I’ve been startled to hear
played at more than one wedding. Although the “we’ve got to carry
each other / one love” refrain is on the mark, I keep wondering if
these people actually listened to the verses, which describe a
tortured affair in which the two victims/lovers are in an utterly
miserable state of emotional co-dependence. Whatever gets you to
the altar, I guess…!
In the end, “The Fly” may encapsulate what I love most about
this album, though, with its combination of dirty, raucous guitar
and Bono doing his best Earth Wind & Fire imitation on the
“Love, we shine like a burnin’ star” harmony vocals. This is the
sound of a band at the height of its creative and musical powers,
cutting loose and having a blast.
That’s a beautiful thing, and also, not coincidentally, the
stuff hit albums are made of. “Achtung, world!” said this album —
U2 is back on top.